


No Quarter

by deux



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8332213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deux/pseuds/deux
Summary: "You often wonder if no one else has really noticed the way that sound bounces around down on the lower levels of this particular base. If you pick the right room to stake out, you can hear everything that goes on in the shared space up above. So you picked the right room."-When Roadhog can't sleep at night, he listens to his new "teammates" talking overhead.Just a quick character study!





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wish there were more fics that sort of looked into the way Roadhog might think after everything that he's been through.
> 
> I decided to take a crack at that myself, so here's the result.

-

 

"Oh, come on! That's so _boring_! Have you never watched one of those old zombie movies?" Oddly accented, sweet but with a bite, judgmental. D.Va's voice.

( _Small, slender, not at all fragile. Lots of clever thoughts in that head._ Balls of steel, that one, _as Junkrat had said_. _Pl_ _enty of admiration in his voice. He was itching to touch her machine, more than anything._ )

  
"Well, duh, I have, but what's that got to do with this? We're talking real apocalypse here." A deeper tone, a man, just as enthusiastic. Lúcio. ( _Fast, fiery, young above all else. Lots of clever thoughts there, too, of a different kind. A revolutionary mind. Dangerous._ )

  
You can hear D.Va scoff in response, can practically feel her roll her eyes even down here a floor below the common area. ( _The type to get exasperated quickly. Might even be an exploitable trait, if she's also the type to act on that exasperation quickly. She seems level headed, but there is a cockiness particular to that age..._ )

  
You have been taking lots of notes, mentally. The bed is comfortable underneath you, but you can't get back to sleep. The sound of voices had woken you about an hour ago, and slowly they had become clearer as your grogginess dissipated and the people speaking settled directly overhead. Even now their voices are muffled by the distance between you and them. They sound a little bit like they're speaking from a foot underwater, tinny, cotton mouthed. You can feel your ears perk trying to catch every word and nuance.

  
You're aware of your own hypervigilance. But now that you're up, you might as well listen.

  
You often wonder if no one else has really noticed the way that sound bounces around down on the lower levels of this particular base. If you pick the right room to stake out, you can hear everything that goes on in the shared space up above.

  
So you picked the right room.

  
You figure that with such a glut of sharp, capable people in one place, at least a few of them must have done the same. Maybe each of those who noticed just didn't want to be the one to mention it, didn't want to look like they were scheming the way you know everyone here is. ( _The cowboy especially_ , a thought intrudes.) Didn't want to cede the ability to stretch out in bed and eavesdrop on the latest gossip, late at night.

  
Gossip isn't worthless, after all. A lot can be gleaned from it.

  
"What I'm _saying_ is... you know how all those movies go, right? You either meet the guy before he loses everything, or you meet him afterwards and figure out what his deal is later on," D.Va responded. "It's a cliché at this point, but it's been done so much for a reason. The point is that everybody is _somebody_ before the zombie apocalypse. And the guys who survive are always the toughest somebodies beforehand!"

  
"Yeah, uh, right," Lúcio said. "Except they aren't always the toughest ones. I feel like you're overlooking, like, the most popular zombie TV show of all time. Sometimes they were just a nurse before the virus hit. A teacher. A dad. Or a farmer! He could have been a farmer. That would explain some things, am I right?" His voice lilts up at the end, sing-song, obviously trying to be funny. Making a reference. An inside joke? ( _They seem close._ )

  
You can make out a muffled something in response. D.Va, hand covering her mouth, stifling a titter.

  
"I mean, I guess!" She laughs a little more clearly. "The biggest, buffest pig farmer of them all. I'm thinking it's far more likely that he was something way rougher than that, dude. He's too... you know."

  
"Too 'one man apocalypse'?"

  
_Oh_ , you think.

  
You guess it does make sense for them to wonder. They're young. And you're old and large and covered in scars. And there's the mask, some added mystery for them. The little they know about you doesn't inspire much aside from questions. You've stolen, killed... they know that. Not much else. And no particulars, most likely.

  
They're curious.

  
You are, too, you realize. So you can't judge them for wondering. But your curiosity about them comes from a different place. You were a reluctant participant in this whole clusterfuck to begin with, after all. And you know what teamwork is like, how good it can be, how bad it can get— how it can devolve when these intelligent, talented, bratty, tightly wound personalities twist one another in new ways, unable to escape. Stressed.

  
You just want to know what you're up against. Just want to preconceive all the ways this development that you had never accounted for might possibly pan out for you. And for your charge, you guess. Junkrat is still a factor. You had been surprised to realize that the instinct to protect him hadn't subsided just because those old threats had.

  
You like the little freak.

  
"...so maybe he was law enforcement. That fits, you know? Knowledge of weapons."

  
"The fact that he rarely speaks. Little emotion. And when he does... certain terminology, certain strategy..." She drifts off, and that balls-of-steel brain is calculating, and her voice is lower, and her ideas are more serious, and you realize that the loud, goofball "wondering" from earlier has shifted over to something a lot quieter.

  
Earnest speculation.

  
You don't know how to feel about it.

  
"Termin _ology_?" It's Lúcio's turn to laugh, and it's loud, breaking the silence of her thought. It's also endearing, even if it's at your expense. "Man, I don't know where you got that from. The guy's barely said two words to me, whole time he's been here." He's clinking a glass around. Probably some exaggerated gesturing going on.

  
She laughs too. Then there are several beats, and another shift.

  
"Sometimes," she says, "some of the things he says..."

  
You feel uneasy and you aren't sure why.

  
"Uh, D.Va? Want to clue me in?"

  
"I can't put my finger on it, but he reminds me of someone," she announces. "Someone!" Her groan of frustration is a little too theatrical, and that's when you understand your unease. 

  
"Well, when you figure it out, lemme know. In the meantiiime..." You can tell from his tone that he's stretching out his back.

  
Chairs slide out, plates clatter. Water runs. Soon they've drifted back into the type of casual banter that isn't valuable at all. Stuff you can't glean much of anything from. You hear their voices get more distant, retreat into another space. And then they're gone, and it's dead quiet again. Just the low hum of the inner workings of this place.

  
You are still awake.

  
And you still feel uneasy. Even more so now, left to your thoughts and the quiet. Something is ticking rhythmically a room over. Junkrat's room. He tinkers with his things around this time almost every night. Checks them and rechecks them, gets things in order. Using his nightmares about the place you both come from as an excuse to manically disassemble and reassemble something less scary. For all his obsession with mayhem and anarchy, he seems to find order to be the most comforting.

  
You're grateful, really, that D.Va dropped her speculation. It's better that those wandering thoughts about your identity be kept lighthearted. Gentle ribbing between friends, not full-on detective work.

  
But you don't know why she let it die. She's a smart young woman, just as you had thought. Good at reading people. She had plucked out a thread of truth, and if she had just kept pulling, kept spitballing, she could have unwound your history entirely. Could have found out what kind of _somebody_ you were, before. How you and people like you had messed it all up.

  
You think she was probably just frightened by that first thread of a theory she'd had, looking at her friend sitting across from her— that smart kid, all optimistic and righteous. Full of ideas about freedom and oppression. D.Va had pulled the thread out, and she'd started twirling it out around her finger. And imagining, imagining. Picturing him gone wrong. A "bad end" version, something like one of her video games.

  
She probably didn't want to offend him by finishing that sentence.

  
Because you know how it was going to go:

  
_Sometimes_ , she was about to tell Lúcio, _he reminds me of you_.

  
A revolutionary mind. Dangerous.

  
The tick, tick, tick keeps coming.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything for a long time. This is a one shot type thing, but if I can think of some other characters it would be fun to eavesdrop on, I might update this. Let me know if you have something in mind, honestly!


End file.
